Category Archives: John Clare

A simple writing prompt for you today – just sit out in the garden (enjoying some sunshine hopefully) and make a list of everything you can hear around you. Write down everything from the van backing in the next road to the grass in the wind. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a bee working hard near your chair.

Now read this list out loud to yourself. You may want to change the order slightly and pay particular attention to your verbs. Are they working hard enough for you? Is there a better work you can use – sometimes it helps me to underline all my verbs, to change them ALL and then decide which ones I want to put back to the original. For your first draft, nothing is sacred.

You can use this poem below by John Clare as an example. On the surface, it really is a simple list of sounds but just try speaking it out loud and you can’t help but hear the garden come to life… in all its rustling, crumpling, whizzing, flirting glory!

As always, feel free to share your work, and please use the hashtags, #WITG or #writinginthegarden.

Pleasant Sounds
John Clare

The rustling of leaves under the feet in woods and under
hedges;
The crumpling of cat-ice and snow down wood-rides,
narrow lanes and every street causeway;
Rustling through a wood or rather rushing, while the wind
halloos in the oak-toop like thunder;
The rustle of birds’ wings startled from their nests or flying
unseen into the bushes;
The whizzing of larger birds overhead in a wood, such as
crows, puddocks, buzzards;
The trample of robins and woodlarks on the brown leaves.
and the patter of squirrels on the green moss;
The fall of an acorn on the ground, the pattering of nuts on
the hazel branches as they fall from ripeness;
The flirt of the groundlark’s wing from the stubbles –
how sweet such pictures on dewy mornings, when the
dew flashes from its brown feathers.

Like this:

Watch my TEDx Talk

https://youtu.be/_KVNGzoGfrA

Order Digging Up Paradise

I'm delighted that my book on poetry, gardens and Kent is now available for order direct from the publishers, Cultured Llama.

Gardening writer, Lia Leendertz says of it: "On this poet’s garden tour, Sarah Salway writes of the gardens’ physical selves, of course, but also of the sensations they conjure, the memories they stir up and the glimpses of history that colour her perception. Each description is rich, layered, personal and moving. It is more like the way we all experience gardens than any garden writing I have come across."

SARAH SALWAY

During my year as Canterbury Laureate in 2012, I started to write a portrait of Kent through its gardens. It wasn't a botanical record or a 'how to' garden, but a creative personal response. I became fascinated with how the close focus of gardens brought in so many other things - history, landscape, cultural movement, personalities, and especially stories.

I've now extended this to gardens outside Kent, and even in art and music. This website records the poetry and stories I write, together with a little about my creative process.

I'll put up more gardens - and garden poems - as I go, but do click on 'Visit a Garden' to come on a virtual tour with me.

Please note that this are my original photographs and writing - if you would like to use any of it, please ask my permission first.